A WordPress.com site dedicated to System Center and Cloud Management

With the new year approaching, I find that it’s that time again; time for a change. For those that have followed my blog for a while, you’ll recall the change in appearance and more content last year.

This coming year will be more of the same. But, I want to get your opinions first.

The first and most important change that I am planning, is switching from a .wordpress.com hosted website, to hosting my own site in Microsoft Azure. As you may have noticed, I don’t really have any articles about Azure. I’ve been putting it off for a while, but I plan to get more experience/exposure with Azure (including it’s integration with System Center) in the coming year. So why not host my own site on Azure as well?

But, this will mean a change in my website’s URL. In fact, I am going to have to come up with a catchy URL to use. Help me decide on the new URL by voting below.

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I thought I would add a sticky post to the home page, to list/show what articles and series I am preparing to post. Hope this keeps you coming back for more. Here is the list of upcoming articles (in no particular order). If you would like a specific post/series to appear sooner than later, then send me an email. It’s helpful to know what articles the community is more interested in.

How to Configure Integration with TFS in System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager

Service Provider Foundation (multi-part series)

If you have an idea or request for an article/post, or would like an existing article to be expanded upon, please send me an email via the About Me page and I will do my best to accommodate. Please note that, when suggestions/requests are received, they are queued as draft posts. This means that there may be a delay before a requested post is written and made available, but rest assured, I am working on it.

Don’t forget to rate, comment, subscribe, and share any articles you found helpful or interesting.

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I encountered this issue while working on a project for a client, involving server build automation.

The client provided me with a copy of their Windows Server 2012 R2 ISO, which I was using in my SCCM Build and Capture task sequence. As you can see from the screenshot, the Task Sequence includes copying the SXS folder onto the local system, in order to be able to install .NET Framework 3.5 (using the -Source parameter).

However, after the OS was installed, I noticed that the .NET Framework 3.5 and PowerShell options (which are also apart of the build) were not installed successfully. I checked, and confirmed that the SXS folder was still present (at the root of C:\). So, I attempted to run the PowerShell install command manually to see if/why it failed. I encountered the following error.

This was odd, since it worked for my Build and Capture of Windows Server 2012. So, off to Google with the error code, and I came across this TechNet article which explained everything:

In a nutshell, there was a Security Update that was released that updated some of the .NET components (KB2966828). According to the TechNet article “If either of these updates are installed, you will run into the above issue if your server does not have access to the Internet to pull the updated components.”

The solution?

Uninstalled the security update

Install .Net Framework 3.5

Reinstalled the update

Refer to the TechNet article for additional options/details. Hopefully this will help anyone that comes across this issue.

Update Baselines

You should see two built-in baselines named Sample Baseline for Security Updates and Sample Baseline for Critical Updates.

Click on theSample Baseline for Security Updates.

In the top menu, click Properties.

In the Baseline Properties dialog, select the Updates menu from the left. This will list the updates that are a part of this baseline. From here you can Add/Remove Updates.

Next, click on the Assignment Scope menu on the left. From here you can select host groups, host clusters, and computers to add to the baseline. After you have made your changes/assignments, click OK.

You can also create your own Baseline, by clicking on Create > Baseline from the top menu.

Host Compliance

Now that we have a Baseline assigned to our Hyper-V Host, let’s examine the Host’s compliance.

Navigate to Fabric > Host Group > and select a Host.

Click on the Compliance button in the top menu, and then click Scan to initiate the compliance check.

Once the Compliance Scan has completed, the console will show the Compliance Status for the Host(s) scanned.

In my Lab example, my Host is showing as “Non Compliant”.

At this point, you can click on the Remediate button from the top menu. This will launch the Update Remediation dialog. Within this dialog, you can select the Update(s) to apply to Host(s) to bring it into compliance, and then click Remediate.

SCVMM will now initiate its automated workflow that will do the following:

Start Maintenance Mode on the Host, which will Live Migrate the VMs to another node in the Hyper-V Cluster

Install any updates required to become Compliant

Reboot the Host

Re-check if the Host computer is now compliant

Stop Maintenance Mode on the Host

Repeat all 5 steps on each node in the cluster

This concludes this series on Patching Hyper-V Hosts with SCVMM 2012. As always, if this post helped you in any way, and you would like to show your appreciation, please rate it, comment on it, and share it with others. Also, feel free to contact me (via the About Me page) with requests for future articles.